Monthly Archives: November 2023

Jayjuz

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Here’s a pretty dispositive demonstration of the destructiveness of Progressive-Democratic Party economic ideology policies. The Transparency Foundation notes that

Our methodology calculates that a typical middle-class family of three earning $130,000 a year faces a “Cost of California” penalty of $26,478.72 versus if they simply paid the national average of cost in each category[.]

And

In California, renters pay 47% more than the national average, while homeowners pay 32% more, healthcare services cost 42% more, and state and local taxes are 14% higher[.]

Even areas where California citizens supposedly pay less than the national average, health insurance and homeowner’s insurance, the claims of lower costs are deceptive.

Health insurance is heavily subsidized by taxes on all Californians, and those taxes generally are elided when State officials calculate the insurance cost.

With homeowner’s insurance, costs to California’s citizens are artificially suppressed by State government mandated rate change limits. With insurers not allowed to charge risk-based premiums—risks that include State officials’ interference with forest and water management practices, interference that then runs up the likelihood of fires and broadens the extent of damage caused by those more frequent fires that do occur—insurers are leaving the State. Those departures, in the medium- and long-term, make Californians increasingly dependent on the State’s government for homeowner’s insurance.

$26,478.72. The 2023 Federal Poverty Guidelines for a family of 3 puts the 100% Guideline at $24,860. The 250% Guideline, used by so many government welfare programs as their upper bound, is $62,150, just a bit over twice that California Penalty.

Progressive-Democrats are actively inflicting poverty on American citizens, and the only rationale (I do not say moral or ethical) motive for this is to create dependency in order to control votes and to preserve Leftist political power.

Ungrateful and Entitled

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New York City’s housing facilities for NYC homeless are full up with illegal aliens coming into the city. Why Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams favors these lawbreakers over the homeless in the city over which he reigns isn’t the point of this post, however. I’m writing about the flip side of that item.

Despite the stresses the influx of illegal aliens, in concert with Adams’ policies, have inflicted on the city’s facilities and finances, Adams functionally continues to welcome them, and he’s caused a makeshift tent city to be set up in Floyd Bennett Field, in Brooklyn. The Field is an erstwhile airport that now houses units of the NYPD, New York City Department of Sanitation, and United States Park Police. The tent city was built there to house 2,000 illegal aliens.

Shortly after 12:30 pm, Sunday, dozens of migrant families arrived at the remote housing site and wanted no part of it upon arrival.

They turned up their noses at the arrangement and got right back on the bus that brought them.

Because these illegals’ tastes are much too refined to be housed in mere tents. And they’d be surrounded by all those Evil Cops. Never mind that the Sanitation Department also is right there, to pick up after them. They’re entitled to much better handouts in recompense for their illegal entry into our nation.

No.

The recompense to which these folks are entitled, the recompense they must receive, is prompt deportation back to their home countries, or at the least back into Mexico, through which most of them so freely traveled—after having become illegal aliens in Mexico, first, via their illegal entry into that nation.

But don’t hold your breath, so long as Progressive-Democratic Party politicians rule over these “sanctuary” jurisdictions.

Contract Discipline

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Amtrak is in the hole to the tune of $140 million in maintenance costs for its current fleet of trains because the contractor Amtrak hired to build and deliver uprated replacement trains is having trouble with testing requirements and production defects and so is nearly three years late on delivery.

Amtrak is also losing even more revenue in anticipated ticket sales from the new, larger trains that were supposed to enter service in 2021. And the railroad is missing out on other revenue because some older Acela units have been pulled from service to be cannibalized for spare parts.

One way for our government to deal with such things is with fixed price contracts, under which the contractor gets a sum of money and must satisfy the production requirements of the contract within that sum. These contracts, though, don’t make the contractee whole from the contractor’s failure.

Here’s another way: write into the contract that the contractor is responsible for the contractee’s maintenance and other costs attributable to the contractor’s failure to meet deadlines. Such a move would make future contractors, e.g., France-based Alstom in the Amtrak case, responsible for Amtrak’s $140 million, and more, inflicted on it by Alstom’s failure to perform. If no contractor is willing to incur that risk, that contractor need have no business from the government at all.

New FBI Headquarters

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The FBI wants a new headquarters building, and the GSA has identified the new location for it, in Greenbelt, MD. The FBI had wanted Springfield, VA, and they’ve raised ethics concerns over the GSA’s site selection process. Those concerns, however real, are in the rumble seat compared to the problem either site presented: both are far too deep inside the DC bubble. One is just 11 miles southwest of Capitol Hill, and the other is just 12 miles northeast of Capitol Hill.

Better locations would have been well outside that bubble, out where us ordinary Americans, us folks with whom the FBI is supposed to be interacting and protecting, live. Places like McPherson, KS, or Broken Bow, NE, or Calvin, OK. Places in our heartland.

There’s more to this, too.

At the [J Edgar] Hoover Building, officials have quick access to prosecutors in the Justice Department’s headquarters across Pennsylvania Avenue.

That’s fine. DoJ headquarters needs to be moved out of the DC bubble, too, for the betterment of our nation. Whichever of those heartland towns (or another like them) gets the FBI headquarters (were my wish to be favorably answered), DoJ HQ should be relocated to another of those towns.

If you don’t know where the towns are without consulting a map, that’s the point.

Here’s a Thought

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(No comments from the peanut gallery.)

Time is rapidly decreasing to get a budget passed in time to prevent a Federal government partial shutdown. There are those who fear that, and many of those distort the situation by claiming that it would be a total shutdown and one that would push all grandmas and grandpas off the Social Security cliff and deny wages for our soldiers. The hysteria is strong in those, but let’s take it seriously for a moment.

Here’s a solution. Assume Congressman Andrew Clyde (R, GA) is correct in his prediction that the House will finish passing all 12 of its appropriation bills by the supposed deadline of 17 November. To the extent the shutdown hysteria needs to be taken seriously, there will need to be an extension/additional Continuing Resolution in order to give the Senate time to deal with the appropriations bills, the House-Senate Conference that will be necessary to resolve any differences, and that CR. I’m eliding here the idea that Senators themselves need no funding in order to do their jobs and work these bills. They can work for free for the time being.

If the Senators, led by Progressive-Democrat Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), but really only 60 of the 100 are needed, are serious, they’ll need under Senate rules only about a week to consider and pass or vote down an appropriation bill. Since Senators all are very proud of their ability to “walk and chew gum,” as they love so quaintly to put it, they can consider all of the appropriations simultaneously and in parallel with their handling of the CR. This is especially true given the size of each Senator’s staff and the size of the Senate-as-a-whole’s staff.

It should take only a day for the Conference Committee to resolve any differences, and an additional day for the respective houses to pass or reject the Committee’s recommendations.

Thus: pass a CR containing spending at the latest pre-Wuhan Virus Situation level, good for nine days. That’s sufficient time for the Senate to act on the CR and the appropriations bills.

And pass no further CRs. Full stop. If the Senate as a whole chooses to reject any of the House bills, or the CR, the Senate—Republicans as well as Progressive-Democrats, depending on how the Republicans vote—will have demonstrated that they’re more interested in their political games than they are in the weal of their constituents and of our nation at large. They should be left, with apologies to Hosea, to reap the whirlwind: it hath no budget; the funds shall yield no meal.